OK, from what we know, and from a legalese perspective, were the complaints handled fairly? I don’t think they were. That was my initial point.
I apologise for my use of the word queen.
Times have changed, for sure.
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I still see no evidence for that. 
Oh, I have no complaint against that word, if the person acts like one. I mean, it’s one thing to be effeminate, but it’s quite another thing to be royal. 
(Just make sure it’s not capitalized – that could be lèse-majesté!)
I don’t mean to be rude but where in the f7ck did you get the idea that I want to make anything about due process anonymous?
Well,
either you want both parties identified, or you want neither party identified. Which is it?
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Couldn’t either be fair with sexual assault accusations?
in any cases? How if it is a priest and kids?
Both parties identified. Due process 101.
What does anonymity in the media have to do with due process?
In that case, if the accused is convicted, the victim is permanently outed (and yes that is a problem). If the accused is exonerated, the accused is permanently associated with the case, which is also a problem, but the accused can always wave the verdict in people’s faces and say I’m certified innocent and can also sue for defamation. Not perfect, but nothing is.
In some jurisdictions, if the accused is a minor, the accused’s name is also withheld from the public. Also not perfect, but nothing is.
Was it Germaine Greer who had the idea of taking the sexual element out of the equation and classing the offences as ABH or GBH?
If not the current system is still clearly far from perfect when such a disproportionately small number of sexual offences reach conviction, even if they reach trial.
You know more about this than I do, but are there many successful defamation cases?
She’s said some similar things.
I don’t track the numbers, sorry.
My impression, though, is that actual rapes are far more common than false accusations of rape.
In the UK a third of rape cases resulted in a conviction in the 1970s. Now it’s around a twentieth.
That doesn’t necessarily mean there are more or fewer rapes or more or fewer false accusations. I think ~50 years ago people were more reluctant to come forward, so the ones who did, on average, would be the ones with stronger evidence.
I understand that. Something within the legal system clearly isn’t working.
It’s not that something isn’t working, it’s that most cases of rape are inherently difficult, if not impossible, to prove. Most rapes don’t happen in public, so no witness. Most of the time there’s no physical signs of violence, and where there is the accused can always plead that they hit the victim but didn’t rape them. DNA evidence only proves there was intercourse, not that it was forced upon the victim. You can also try relying on evidences of trauma, but those can always be rebuted as faked, depend on a psychiatric evaluation which is not exact science, and many victims internalize the trauma so that it is hard to detect externally.
My humble opinion is that rape is the kind of crime for which justice will never be able to be properly served, unless outlandishly coercive measures (signing a contract, everybody wears bodycams at all times…) are taken.
My point was that conviction rates fall as attempts to increase conviction rates are introduced.
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Gotcha, just jumped in the bandwagon and misunderstood.
The two that appear to coincide with falling conviction rates are the capacity to give consent and victim anonymity. They may have increased accusations, of course.
Both are well-meaning, but I wonder whether they make a typical juror less likely to convict.
Better training for police can help. For example, serial killer Bruce McArthur was arrested for rape (or maybe just assault?) in 2016, before some of the murders he committed, when someone did consent to sex with him but didn’t consent to choking sex. The police let him go because they thought it was just a misunderstanding, but an independent review later found that (1) they had somehow failed to notice his previous assault conviction, which would have damaged his credibility and given them a reason to dig deeper (even though his record would have been inadmissible in court because it was suspended), and (2) the two parties’ stories had inconsistencies other than just the question of consent to choking, so they did have a reason to dig deeper but chose not to.
(Of course, if they have the right training already but just don’t give a damn, that’s a different problem.)
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